A preferred form of projection lenses for wide screen television is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,348,081, 4,300,817 and 4,526,442, all assigned to the assignee of the present application.
In these previous patents, the lens units have been referred to as groups which perform specific or distinct optical functions. However, in accordance with present United States Patent and Trademark Office requirements, the overall lens will be defined in terms of optical "units". It will be understood that the term "units" refers to one or more optical elements or components air spaced from another optical unit.
It is well known that a specified optical function(s) of a lens unit in an overall lens may be accomplished by using one element or component or more than one element or component dependent upon the correction or function desired. A decision as to whether one or more elements is used as a lens unit in an overall lens design may be based on various considerations, including but not limited to, ultimate performance of the overall lens, ultimate costs of the lens, acceptable size of the lens, etc. Accordingly, in the following specification and appended claims, the term "lens unit" refers to one or more lens elements or lens components which provide a defined optical function or functions in the design of the overall lens.
The lenses disclosed in the aforementioned patents generally comprise three lens units: from the image end a first lens unit, having at least one aspheric surface, which serves as an aberration corrector; a second lens unit including a biconvex element which supplies all or substantially all of the positive power of the lens; and a third lens unit having a concave surface towards the image end of the lens, serving as a field flattener, and essentially correcting the Petzval curvature of the first and second groups.
The lenses, as disclosed, are designed for use with a surface of a cathode ray tube (CRT). The lenses of U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,817, utilizing a single biconvex element in the second lens unit, all have an equivalent focal length (EFL) of one hundred twenty-seven millimeters or greater, while the lenses of U.S. Pat. No. 4,348,081, which utilize a two-element lens unit, including the biconvex element, may have an EFL reduced to eighty-five millimeters as designed for direct projection for a five inch diagonal CRT. The lenses described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,442 are designed to have a fold in the optical axis between the first and second lens units and have been designed so that the EFL is as low as one hundred twenty-six millimeters. These EFL's are for CRT screens having a viewing surface with an approximate five inch diagonal.
Projection TV sets are rather bulky and have required high volume cabinets. One manner of reducing the cabinet size is to decrease the EFL of the projection lenses. This, of course, increases the field angle of the lens.
A further consideration is introduced wherein a spacing is provided between the phosphor screen of the CRT and the third lens unit of the projection lens. This spacing may be required for the inclusion of a liquid cooling material and a window necessary to enclose the coolant against the face of the CRT. This additional spacing between the face of the CRT causes the third negative lens unit to contribute more negative power, which must be compensated by increased power in the positive second lens unit.
An effect of increasing the angular coverage of the lens as a result of decreasing the EFL, is that the aberrations become more difficult to correct. A single biconvex element second lens unit, as shown in the aforementioned patents, does not provide the lens designer adequate degrees of freedom to correct for the resulting astigmatism and distortion. By dividing the optical power of the second lens unit, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,348,081, the EFL may be shortened. However, merely splitting the optical power of the second lens unit into two elements to obtain additional degrees of optical design freedom, does not provide acceptable contrast and resolution where the angular coverage of the projection lenses is required to be in excess of twenty-seven degrees, semi-field.
The EFL of the lens is a function in the total conjugate distance between the CRT and the display screen. This is shown by the relationship EQU OL=EFL(1+1/M)+EFL(1+M)
where OL is the overall conjugate distance of the system from object to image
EFL (1+M) is the distance from the image to the first principal point of the lens PA1 EFL (1+1/M) is the distance from the object to the second principal point of the lens PA1 M is the magnification of the system expressed as the ratio of object height to image height.
and
Therefore, in order to decrease the total distance between the CRT and the screen, it is necessary to reduce the EFL.
Projection lens of the overall type described have been designed with decreased EFL's by designing a more complex second lens unit split into more than one lens element as exemplified in the lenses disclosed in co-pending applications Ser. Nos. 642,825 and 652,062, filed Aug. 21, 1984 and Sept. 19, 1984, now U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,697,892 and 4,707,084, respectively.
These designs are currently used on many wide screen projection television sets and may have an equivalent focal length as low as eighty millimeters. It will be understood that the EFL will be greater if there is a fold in the optical axis between the first and second lens units.
The lenses described in the above identified patents as well as those disclosed in co-pending applications are limited in angular coverage by the fact that the light from the phosphorus on the internal surface of the cathode ray tube (CRT) face plate will be internally reflected at high angles of incidence. Therefore, in order to achieve a smaller volume cabinet for projection television systems, it is necessary to see the phosphors of the CRT face plate all at an angle no larger than the previously mentioned lenses. This requires a wider angle lens, without having a wider angle at the phosphor screen, which displays the image.
In lenses of the type disclosed in the previously mentioned patents, the conventional way to accomplish this is to use a retrofocus or inverted telephoto type of design. Generally stated, a retrofocus lens is one in which the back focal length (BFL) is greater than the equivalent focal length. Lenses of this type have a negative group on the object end followed by a positive group. In this construction a very wide angle of the object can be covered.
The lenses of the above identified patents and applications comprise from the object end a lens unit of relatively large negative power serving as a field flattener and correcting the Petzval curvature of the other lens elements. This strong negative group is followed by a second strong positive lens unit and then by a third lens unit having at least one aspheric surface to correct aberrations. In the above referenced patents and applications, the optical power of this third lens unit is relatively weak as determined by the radii and thickness at the optical axis.
The strong negative power of the field flattener introduces obliquity to the rays. The solution to this problem is to reduce the optical power of the field flattening lens unit. However, this would result in increased field curvature which must be corrected at another location with negative power. Thus it is necessary to introduce negative power at the aberration corrector lens unit. However, if the corrector lens unit has increased negative optical power in order to additionally correct for Petzval curvature, then it may introduce other aberrations which must be at least partially corrected by the second positive lens unit. The immediate effect of increased negative power in the corrector is that spherical aberration is considerably increased.
The aperture rays become larger at the positive lens unit than at the corrector lens unit. The aperture rays are the rays that strike the top and bottom of the exit pupil. They are the limiting rays that go diametrically through the top and bottom of the aperture (or the diametrically opposed horizontal limits of the aperture), sometimes referred to as the diaphragm. As a design consideration, it is not desired that the angles of these rays increase as they traverse the overall lens since the aberrations associated with these rays (aperture dependent aberrations) increase.
One technique of correcting for these aberrations is a more complex design of the middle positive lens unit. Thus, this requires at least two elements in the second lens unit. The aberration corrector lens unit must also have a complex problem of partially correcting field curvature without introducing excessive amounts of distortion and astigmatism.
Overall, this requires aspheric surfaces of high order polynomials on the aberration correcting lens unit, and the concave surface of the field flattener must be carefully configured in order that it not introduce aberrations that cannot be corrected.
The solution to the overall problem is that the aberration corrector lens unit has significant negative power in the coaxial determination thereof but even more power considering the aspherics. The field flattener lens unit has a base radius at the optical axis which is of a magnitude that woud indicate lesser negative optical power as calculated at the optical axis. Otherwise stated, the field flattener lens unit from a paraxial aberration point of view does not appear to do a function it is actually accomplishing with its aspheric surface. The field flattening lens unit must thus do more work off the optical axis than on the optical axis.
Therefore, to achieve the objects of this invention, the aspheric surfaces of the aberration corrector lens unit and the field flattener lens unit must be configured to achieve the desired aberration correction. It is difficult to describe these aspheric surfaces as such and therefore the surfaces and powers of the lens units having aspheric surfaces will be at least partially described in terms of "approximating or best fitting spheres" or in terms of optical power based on lens elements having "approximating or best fitting spherical surfaces".
Approximating or best fitting spherical surfaces with respect to aspheric surfaces are discussed in a paper entitled, "Minimax Approximation By A semi-Circle", by Charles B. Dunham and Charles R. Crawford, published in the Society For Industrial And Applied Mathematics Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1, February, 1980, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
An algorithm prepared by one of the authors of the above referenced paper for defining the approximation of best fit of spherical surfaces with respect to from aspherical surfaces is hereinafter set forth.